


May 2011

by JJK



Series: Life, Interrupted [16]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - The Time Traveler's Wife, Established Relationship, Fluffy-ish, Genetics, M/M, Science, Time Travel, they all fee pretty bad about it, warning; Joly's lab uses animal testing because there's no other way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-05-03 01:05:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14557506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JJK/pseuds/JJK
Summary: “We’ve had a breakthrough! Last night.” Joly explained, his grin getting even wider.“What sort of breakthrough?” Grantaire kept his hopes guarded. They’d probably just managed to get rid of the burnt plastic taste that had haunted the coffee machine ever since Bossuet visited the lab.





	May 2011

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I am still thinking about and working on this story, even though it's been anawfully long time since I last updated! Hopefully there'll be some more installments coming soon now that I've refound my writing-groove :D
> 
> Also, my knowledge of biology and genetics, etc. is limited. Please just bear with my attempts at explaining science and grant me lots of artistic license! Thanks :)

_May, 2011 (Grantaire is 39, Enjolras is 35)_  
Grantaire strolled across the glass encased atrium of Joly’s new lab with a smug spring in his step. A mysterious, anonymous donor had recently gifted Dr Joly and his team a research grant of $5 million which had bought them a new lab space, all of the high-tech equipment they could only dream of before, and actual salaries for the interns. No one had yet pieced together that the week before the Chicago lottery jackpot of $5 million had been won by some lucky fellow who wished to remain anonymous and that Grantaire hadn’t seemed very surprised by the news. Well, Grantaire was pretty sure that Combeferre had figured it out, but he hadn’t told the others, yet.  


Their research had come on leaps and bounds in the last few months alone, and Grantaire was finally beginning to think positively about the chances of them finding a cure. He’d been popping in to see Joly on an almost weekly basis for the past four years, and for most of that time they’d been chasing dead ends. Joly had managed to figure out how Grantaire Travelled, after he discovered a glitch in Grantaire’s DNA - a string of repeated code in Chromosome 17 that shouldn’t be there and had never been recorded before – but had no luck figuring out why it happened, or how to stop it. He and his team had managed to splice some of Grantaire’s DNA into mice who were soon Travelling all over the lab, forever escaping from their cages and driving the intern’s mad. They’d won an award for that particular research paper, although Enjolras, Courfeyrac and Cosette had all vehemently expressed their concerns over using animals as test subjects (they’d eventually relented, reluctantly, after realising there was literally no other way of researching a cure without killing Grantaire in the process).  


In the time that they’d been in the new lab, Joly had been able to synthesise a solution that targeted the repeated string of code and prevented it from releasing proteins; it had worked for a while, the problem was it had a tendency to shutdown protein production from other cell clusters too; proteins that were vital for everything from breathing to controlling muscle movement and the mice had begun to die from a dizzying array of unintended site effects that made Grantaire queasy even thinking about it.  


“Morning, R,” Joly greeted him as Grantaire entered the impressive corner office that looked out over the river. Grantaire grinned and took a seat in an arm chair in front of Joly’s desk. Their weekly meetings had become something of a highlight, despite his initial reservations. Joly was an avid fan of sci-fi and more often than not their sessions devolved into conversations about obscure sci-fi books and comics that no one else seemed to have read. On that particular afternoon, Joly was brimming with an excitement that simply couldn’t be contained. He wore a grin stretched so wide it must have been hurting his ears, and was practically levitating out of his chair, his weight almost entirely on his elbows as he leaned over his desk, eager to share some good news with Grantaire.  
“You look pleased.” Grantaire commented with a wry understatement.  


“We’ve had a breakthrough! Last night.” Joly explained, his grin getting even wider.  


“What sort of breakthrough?” Grantaire kept his hopes guarded. They’d probably just managed to get rid of the burnt plastic taste that had haunted the coffee machine ever since Bossuet visited the lab.  


“I think we’ve done it. No travelling. All sixteen mice accounted for. And all of them in perfect health. I think the solution is finally stable.”  


Grantaire sat dumbfounded as the weight of the words washed over him. He couldn’t quite comprehend what Joly was saying.  


“A cure? You’ve actually found a cure?”  


“More of a suppressor.” Joly corrected him, nodding eagerly. “It’s not a take-once-fix-all cure, but from the results so far it looks like whilst the solution’s in your system you’ll be prevented from Travelling. The effects last approximately between 6-8 hours, so once we’ve figured out the correct dosage you might only need to take a tablet three times a day and no more interruptions. No more unwanted time travel.”  


“You’ve actually found a cure?” Grantaire repeated himself. He didn’t know which of the emotions swirling through him to latch on to: disbelief? Elation? Uncertainty?  


“Obviously this is still in the very early stages, we need to do lots of very vigorous testing before it’s ready for human consumption, but, yes. All indications look good.”  


Grantaire slumped back into his seat in shock and dragged a hand through his hair. “Holy shit.” He said eventually. “I never thought you’d actually do it.”  


Now it was Joly’s turn to look surprised. “But you’re the one who told me where to look. Last week… I assumed…I guess I assumed that you already knew it would succeed.”  


Grantaire shook his head. “That wasn’t me…not yet. But…” his hopes began to sink rapidly. “If future me is still travelling, what does that mean? That means it doesn’t work?” He was left with an empty, sickening feeling in his stomach.  


“Not necessarily, it can’t have been long from now, you still had a cut on your temple.”  


Grantaire brushed the stiches in his forehead gingerly, remnants from returning home last week and ploughing straight into the sideboard after a particularly disorientating Travel. “You didn’t waste any time then. When was this?”  


“About a week ago. You turned up on my doorstep in the dead of night, wearing, now that I think about it, a particularly odd assortment of clothing, and gave me a scrap of paper with a chemical compound scribbled on it. It was the missing ingredient, what we’d been looking for to stabilise the solution.”  


“Show me?”  


Joly fished a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Grantaire who studied the words on it intently, although the string of letters and numbers meant nothing to him apparently his life depended on him remembering it correctly.  


“Guess I’d better study this, mind if I keep it?”  


“Go ahead.” Joly said with a bemused smile. “That’s some paradox right there.”  


“Yeah, feels like my whole life is a fucking paradox,” Grantaire mumbled, starting intently at the piece of paper in his hands with the solution stabling compound that Joly had given him, because _he’d_ given it to Joly.  


“The question is, would I have thought of it myself?”  


“Nah, the question is; will it work?” Grantaire stopped brooding on the paper and glanced up to Joly with a grin. “When do you think it’ll be ready?”  


“Not for a while. We’re in no rush, and we need to get this right, R. Enjolras would never forgive me if something happened to you.”  


=  


Enjolras trooped into the living room after a long day at work and threw himself onto the sofa with a sigh.  


“Rough day?” Grantaire asked, looking up from the arm chair across the room.  


“The worst.” He sat up slightly and began peeling off the many layers of his suit; kicking off his shoes, toeing off his socks, losing his tie and belt to a pile on the floor, and running a hand through his bright blonde curls until they sprung loosely about his head, the gel that held they stiffly in place now rendered ineffectual. That done, Enjolras turned to give Grantaire a weary smile, noticing that Grantaire had been watching him with an amused little smile, and that Grantaire was wearing his reading glasses.  


It was relatively new development, Grantaire’s deteriorating eyesight, and one that he usually stoutly ignored. He said they made him look old, and no matter how many times Enjolras had tried to tell him that they actually made him look rather scholarly and refined, and like the attractive librarian he was, Grantaire mostly refused to accept that he needed them. Enjolras suspected it came from a place of worry, that if Grantaire let himself believe he needed glasses he’d soon find himself stuck in the past without them. Thankfully it was only his short-sight that was going, and so far, he only needed glasses to read at close proximity; from everything Enjolras knew about Grantaire’s travels, Enjolras suspected that wasn’t often a high priority for him when he was gone.  


“Reading anything good?” Enjolras asked with a sleepy lilt to this voice.  


In answer Grantaire held up the book in his hands and with a jolt Enjolras saw that it was the little red book that journaled their time in the meadow. He sat up, looking puzzled.  


“I’m trying to figure out if I’ve visited all of these dates yet,” Grantaire explained, but that only made Enjolras more confused. “You were always telling me how old I looked at times, I’m starting to feel affronted.”  


“How many have you visited?”  


“Most of them I think.” Grantaire scanned the list again. “April 15th, 1989, can you remember what that was?”  


“’89? How old was I?”  


“14. And it was mid-afternoon, must have been right after you got home from school,” Grantaire said, predicting and answering Enjolras’ next question.  


Enjolras tipped his head into the into the backrest and cast his mind back. “You taught me self-defence.” He said, remembering. “I came home with a black eye and you taught me how to take care of myself if I ever got into a fight again.”  


“Oh yeah,” Grantaire grinned at the memory and drew a sharp line through a notebook he had balanced on the arm of the chair. “I seem to remember you had a pretty nice right hook.”  


“I still do,” Enjolras brought up sleepy fists and waved them in front of his face.  


“What about October 91?” Grantaire asked, squinting at the list, even through his reading glasses. “It was quite late, you might not have come down.”  


“No, I did. I snuck out after my parents had gone to bed, we stargazed.” That was one of Enjolras’ fondest memories from the meadow.  


“I don’t remember that one,” Grantaire circled the date on his list. It was the only date not struck through. The only one left. “Huh, do I really look old?”  


“No, you don’t. I was young. I thought everyone older than me looked old.” Enjolras said easily, but as he studied Grantaire he saw just how much the last few years had taken their toll on him. His hair was definitely greying at the temples, and the thinnest of grey streaks had begun to weave themselves through his curls. He’d lost a lot of weight from what had already been a lean frame so that his jaw line jutted sharply and the bony lumps at the end of this collar bones stuck out from shoulders, noticeable even through the thin charity t-shirt he was wearing.  


Enjolras had initially been pleased that Grantaire was seeing Joly and that they were working towards finding a cure, or at least some way to manage Grantaire’s ’symptoms’ as they now referred to Travelling. But the constant testing, the nights spent in sleep labs whilst they monitored his brain activity, rounds and rounds of unsuccessful gene therapy, and the stress that came with each time they hit a dead end had all been a heavy price to pay, and the windfall of recent funding had only seemed to increase the energy Grantaire had put into helping Joly’s research. Enjolras wasn’t an idiot, he knew where the money had come from, the same way he knew where lots of anonymous donations to his charity came from, but he hadn’t said anything. He knew how much this meant to Grantaire and how much Grantaire relied on him for optimism. If he suggested they give up, well, he wasn’t sure how Grantaire would take that.  


“Why the sudden interest in mapping dates?” he asked, dragging his attention off Grantaire’s thin bony fingers and up into his eyes.  


“Just…curious. I met a younger version of myself this afternoon. He was here very briefly, just standing in the kitchen and looking out into the garden. I think he was from just before we bought this place.”  


“I remember. You wouldn’t tell me for ages that you’d seen our future house, but every single property we looked around you marched straight for the kitchen and the garden and declared it an instant ‘no’. The realtor was less than impressed.” Enjolras smiled. He pushed himself out of the sofa and wandered around to the back of Grantaire’s arm chair, draping himself around Grantaire’s shoulders and planting a kiss against his temple.  


“I realised that more and more I’m revisiting memories I’ve already lived through. I hardly ever – never – see an older version of myself anymore; I haven’t for some time now.”  


Enjolras’ hands stilled on Grantaire’s chest and his breathing hitched. “What are you saying?” Terrible, awful thoughts swirled like a dark cloud through Enjolras’ mind.  


“Joly thinks he’s found a cure.”  


“What?”  


“He’s managed to stabilise the solution.”  


Enjolras couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Grantaire took Enjolras’ hands in his and kissed the backs of them so tenderly Enjolras was caught entirely off guard.  


“It’ll be months before it’s ready for me to take,” Grantaire explained. “But I wanted to make sure we’d had all of the meadow moments before I do.”  


“Is it safe?”  


“It will be. Joly will test it thoroughly before he let’s me take it, you know what he’s like.”  


“Mhmm,” Enjolras answered with a non-committal murmur; not adding that he knew exactly what Grantaire was like as well, and that he was more than a little likely to try an untested drug on himself – that he had done, numerous times over the last few years.  


“Can you imagine? No more travelling. No more of me disappearing on you.” He sounded optimistic and when he turned his head to look up at Enjolras there was an unmistakable gleam of hope in his eyes. Enjolras couldn’t bear to take that away by voicing negative feelings, so he stayed quiet, pressing another kiss into the side of Grantaire’s head.  


“I’ll put some coffee on.”  


“None for me. Joly’s worried about the effects caffeine may have on the solution. I’d better start cutting back now if he’s going to expect me to go cold turkey one day.”  


“Alright. Do you want some wine then? I know I could use some after the day I’ve had.”  


“Uh, he, er, thinks alcohol might react too. But you should have some.” Grantaire released Enjolras’ hands and let him slip away to the kitchen.  


Enjolras poured himself a large glass and wine and stood for a moment, looking out over their garden and watching birds hop across their lawn. He should feel happy at this development; he should be elated. Why then, did it terrify him so much? Why couldn’t he help fear that the reason there were no older versions of Grantaire Travelling throughout their lives was not because the solution worked, but because of a far darker reason. Why if this drug killed Grantaire?  


He was startled from his dark musings by Grantaire’s hands snaking around his waist.  


“Tell me about your day.” He said, pressing his chin on Enjolras’ shoulder.  


“You don’t want to hear about it.”  


“I really do. Come on,” Grantaire pulled back, and took Enjolras’ free hand leading him towards the garden door.  


They settled into the bench on the patio, Grantaire guiding Enjolras to lean into his side and cushion his head in the hollow of Grantaire shoulder. As the sun began to slip over the tops of the trees Grantaire gently coaxed from Enjolras the grumblings from his day and as they shared the bottle of wine – despite Grantaire’s initial protestations – his worries about the treatment.  
“I won’t touch it until I’m certain it won’t harm me.”  


“Promise?”  


“I promise.”  


“I just want you safe, Grantaire. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.” Enjolras said quietly.  


“I know. I will be.”  


“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, I don’t want to worry that I’ll lose you.”  


“If this works, you shouldn’t have to worry about that ever again. I love you.” Grantaire gave Enjolras’ had a squeeze.  


“I love you too.” Enjolras snuggled deeper against Grantaire’s shoulder, trying to ignore how bony it felt, and trying to ignore the worry that knotted itself in his stomach. Grantaire would be fine. he always was. He always would be.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are always appreciated.  
> Find me on [tumblr](http://trenchcoatsandtimetravel.tumblr.com/)


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